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If your company has not embraced content
marketing yet, what are you waiting for? If you still need a
bit of convincing, here are four statistics to help you or your
management understand why this strategy is so important:

The short and sweet of it is, you should be investing in content
marketing.

Now that you’ve decided to move forward with content marketing,
what’s next?

While content marketing can be complex, the premise behind it is
quite simple: create incredible onsite content, amplify that
onsite content through offsite channels and convert the traffic
that views the onsite content into customers.

Assuming the marketing strategy is taken care of, the next issue
is effectively producing the high-quality content, which can be
an issue. Kapost
reports that 42 percent of marketers say lack of human resources
is the key barrier to effective content marketing. This lack of
bandwidth makes it difficult for brands to execute marketing
initiatives. The logical answer is to either hire creative
development internally or outsource it.

The first and often most important question related to content
creation is, “What’s the cost?” Let’s look at the cost of hiring
an internal creative team.

Writer: Depending on the industry and
experience, a content writer’s salary can on average range
between $26,000
and $61,000.

Graphic designer: Depending on experience, a
graphic designer’s salary can on average range between
$29,500 to $58,000.

Web Developer: Depending on experience, a web
developer’s salary can on average range between $32,000
to $82,000.

Videographer: Depending on experience, a
videographer’s salary can on average range between $24,000
and $74,000.

This is just salary. It doesn’t take into consideration employee
benefits, turnover costs, hiring costs, and variable production
costs, among other factors.

If these numbers sound outside your allotted budget for content
creation, than outsourcing might be more economical. Outsourcing
content creation lets you work with a wide range of creative
talents on a per project basis and offers a viable alternative to
hiring. But you have to be smart about your hiring tactics. If
not done correctly, outsourcing your work can lead to a decrease
in quality and increase in cost and time. To minimize risk (to a
degree), here are some basic tips you can follow.

Do your due diligence. Before you move forward
with an outsource provider, you should research them, ask for
examples and jump on a call to learn about their process, among
other checks. If you aren't competent in a certain area, like
web design, make sure you have someone who is trained in this
field to help you research.

Beware if they do not do their due diligence.
If your outsource provider is not asking questions about the
project’s scope and collecting information about the specs,
they will most certainly fail to meet your expectations. Here
is an example
of a scope questionnaire my company uses. Make sure the
provider addresses all of these points.

What’s their quality assurance policy? If you
decide to use a freelancer, they are likely not to have any
stipulations associated with quality. However, most agencies
will provide you an assurance policy.

Cheap content usually results in cheap
quality. High-quality content comes at a price. With
that said, you can still find valuable rates. You just need to
make sure they understand the project and your expectations
before providing a quote.

If you have the budget and means to hire content creation
internally, it is certainly the way to go. You have the ability
to alter projects on the fly while maintaining the brand voice
and quality with ease.

However, if you are like the many businesses out there than
cannot afford to hire and scale content production internally,
than outsourcing creative development is the way to go.